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Facism

Right to free speech, peaceful protest, and free assembly is all being eroded

By 5 Mins Read
Justin Tallis, AFP

In July 2025, the British government labeled the group Palestine Action as a terrorist organization under the Terrorism Act. Following this, showing public support for the group, such as carrying a placard with its name, became a criminal offense. Many arrests were made specifically for this offense, a move that human rights groups like Amnesty International have condemned as “criminalising dissent.” 

At a demonstration in London’s Trafalgar Square in April 2026, police arrested 523 people in a single day for showing support for the proscribed organization Palestine Action. A protest in September 2025 saw at least 425 arrests, and another series of demonstrations in November 2025 led to the arrest of at least 90 people in London and 28 in Nottingham.

Germany downgraded in global ratings report on civic freedoms

  • Country downgraded from “Narrowed” to “Obstructed.”
  • Berlin police filed nearly 9,000 criminal charges linked to pro-Palestinian demonstrations
  • NGOs critical of Israel faced funding cuts, raids, and surveillance

The CIVICUS Monitor has downgraded Germany’s civic space to “Obstructed” in its annual ratings. This sharp decline reflects a continued and all-encompassing crackdown on Palestine solidarity, with protesters facing severe police brutality, and civil society organisations subjected to raids and funding cuts.

The deterioration of Germany’s civic space has occurred at an alarming rate. This change, detailed in the People Power Under Attack 2025 report, comes after Germany was downgraded from ‘Open’ to ‘Narrowed’ in 2023, and now falls even further to the third tier of ‘Obstructed’. This rating means civic space is heavily contested, with authorities imposing legal and practical constraints that restrict the full enjoyment of fundamental rights. Germany joins the ranks of 39 countries worldwide with the same rating, including Hungary, Brazil, and South Africa.

German authorities have continued to severely restrict the right to protest in solidarity with the Palestinian people. At the beginning of 2025, Berlin police reported nearly 9,000 criminal charges linked to pro-Palestinian protests in the city since 7th October 2023. Participants, journalists, and parliamentary observers at such protests are constantly subjected to severe police brutality, including kettling, pepper spraying, punching, and choking.

Any perceived breach of overly broad protest restrictions leads to forceful police intervention. A Palestine solidarity protest in January was violently dispersed after participants used Arabic, breaching a police rule, introduced in 2024, that limited demonstrations to German and English. Rights groups, including Amnesty International, have condemned the language ban as discriminatory.

“Across Europe, governments have sought to silence those speaking out against genocide instead of heeding their calls to conscience, with Germany at the absolute forefront of the crackdown,” said Tara Petrović, Europe researcher for the CIVICUS Monitor. “Instead of supporting those advocating for human rights, Germany has conflated anti-Israel criticism with antisemitism, chilling speech nationwide, emboldening the right, and silencing civil society voices.”

German authorities have paired political pressure with heavy-handed policing to suppress free expression, from storming a relocated event with UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese to monitoring students who livestreamed it. Research showed federal development funding for Palestinian and Israeli organisations critical of Israel’s hard-right government was withdrawn under political pressure. In June 2025, Germany’s domestic intelligence agency designated the CSO Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East as extremist, alongside several other Palestine solidarity groups.

Repression of dissent extends past those speaking out for Palestine: Germany’s civic freedoms came under mounting strain this year as authorities responded to a surge of protests linked to the rise of the far-right AfD and Elon Musk’s unprecedented interventions in the 2025 election. In some cases, those protests were also met with violent repression. As protesters gathered outside an AfD convention where Alice Weidel was nominated as the party’s chancellor candidate, police deployed unmuzzled dogs against non-violent protesters and knocked a Left party parliamentarian unconscious.

Protesters also targeted the CDU/CSU’s cooperation with the AfD to pass a restrictive anti-immigrant agenda, breaking a longstanding taboo against collaborating with the far-right; after the party’s electoral win, CDU chancellor-elect Friedrich Merz launched a sweeping inquiry targeting NGOs accused of lacking “political neutrality”, including groups behind the organisation of those protests.

Further information

The CIVICUS Monitor is a global research platform that assesses the state of civic freedoms—including freedom of expression, association, and peaceful assembly—across 198 countries and territories. Drawing on verified reports of civic space violations from a network of 20+ research partners worldwide, the Monitor tracks incidents including protests, censorship, the detention of activists, and more. Each country is assigned a score from 0 to 100, reflecting the openness of its civic space, with higher scores indicating greater respect for civic freedoms. Based on these scores, countries are classified into five categories: Open, Narrowed, Obstructed, Repressed, or Closed.

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